3 Benefits of Conducting Project Retrospectives

October 31, 2022 Stan

Do you remember the last project you led or participated in? How did it go: good, bad, ugly, or all of the above? Honestly, it could be all three. Lessons learned is a term we hear all in life, mostly to speak of things we never want to go back to ever again; however, there are also benefits in documenting the positive things we experienced on projects. So how do you collect such information when projects close? Conduct a project retrospective.

While reaping the benefits of retrospectives, which I’ll share 3 later, here are also some ways to ensure you are setting the stage and creating an environment to openly share feedback and experiences.

Participants

Consider who to invite to the project retrospective. Keeping the group to the internal project team will allow the team to share any stakeholder management wins and difficulties. If including project sponsors, project teams can directly learn any organizational impacts and/or customer success as a result of the project implementation.

Preparation

Schedule the project retrospective at least 2 weeks after the project launches and prepare notes or send questions ahead of time.

Meeting facilitation

If you are leading the session, remind the team the purpose of a project retrospective, create a safe space for sharing (e.g., speak from own experiences), remove negativity (e.g., not the time for finger pointing or blaming something out of one’s control like an environmental disaster), and provide the project background, along with whether the project met measures of success (e.g., launched on time and before a former platform contract ended).

Retrospective questions

Ask the three basic ones: what went well, what didn’t go well, and areas for improvement. If any attendees get stuck answering these questions, you could go a level deeper asking why they thought it was an easy or difficult project. Was it the people, process, or system that got in the way or assisted in helping you remove a blocker? Where possible, allow a few minutes for each team member to consider their answers and then open it up to the group to share. Sometimes providing a quiet moment helps the more introverted attendees participate.

Now that the stage is set and the project retrospective is completed, here are 3 benefits you instantly gain when conducting such a session by asking what went well, what didn’t go well, and areas for improvement.

Team building – The people: When we focus on the positive outcomes of projects, especially in giving kudos to teams and individuals, we are building stronger teams and working relationships. It’s easy to overlook when individuals just do that – a great job. The next time the team executes a project together, you’ll be amazed by the camaraderie within the group. They’ll bounce ideas (without judgment) and will be open to making mistakes together. Eventually the team can identify when they are in a flow or off the mark.
Gaining ROI – The numbers: In highlighting what went well, there are great learnings in understanding the data behind how we help our teams and organization. Maybe we learned that we built a landing page element more efficiently that produced more gains vs a widget that took more working sessions (people-time) and less activity on the page. Efficiency gains equals less cost, and where applicable more profit for more production.
Opportunities to do better – The process: While there are times where we want to forget the mistakes we made and move on, taking time to understand why something didn’t go as planned can be beneficial. Did the team miss a step in the process? Or did the team build a new custom code that could help similar future projects? In sharing these opportunities, remember to assign someone any next steps for accountability that the team will act upon these improvements. That could mean updating a process document, sharing any cascading messaging to other responsible/impacted parties, and/or training for a technical team (e.g., new code).

Need help planning for a successful project retrospective? Relationship One is here to help, contact us today!

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